[Red]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

Thank you for posting what should be obvious but has been missed by many a poster in this thread. No one sensible is saying Brouwer is a scrub 4th liner that doesn't improve the team. However 4.5 million a year, for 4 years, is not small money relative to the salary cap.

This is the same money TJ Brodie is making over the same time span. Brodie will expectedly outperform his contract, which is what you need across the roster to win a Stanley Cup. I would add Backlund as another player I expect to outperform his contract, as well as ELC/Bridge guys like Tkachuk, Kulak, and Jankowski.

Among guys who won't "outperform" their contracts we have core players who should expect to perform to the value of their contracts (Gaudreau, Monahan, Giordano, Hamilton, Bennett?).

There will always be a player or two who is not performing at the level of their pay. We can call that "Inevitible #4 Defenseman Signing", "Lance Bouma", Matt Stajan, heck I'd even argue Frolik isn't expected to perform at a level commensurate to his pay.. Was a right handed shot power play scorer a team need? Certainly. No argument there. But we've added another player who will fall into this category of not being worth his contract.

We got away with having Raymonds and Engellands the past few years because our stars were getting paid pennies on the dollar. Now when our stars will be paid US dollars on the Canadian dollar, we will constantly be up against the cap with virtually zero flexibility to make a large scale move - the acquisition of a game-breaking type veteran talent. Your veteran forward group needs to have at least one huge-impact players - every recent champ with a young core has still had a guy Hossa, Brown, Gaborik, Sharp or the like in its top six. We not only lack that calibre of top six veteran forward, but we've actively elected to fill that player's reserved cap space with Brouwer. No one sensible is going to trade us a Mark Stone for a Troy Brouwer.

It's lost opportunity cost, not a bad player. In isolation Brouwer is a player that has had a positive impact for his teams over at least the past six seasons and should be a middle sixer for us for at least the first two years of his deal - but he won't bring back value and as we approach the later years of the deal will passively limit our options.

TJ Brodie's contract is irrelevant. That's like bringing up Gaudreau's contract.

Anyways, Flames needed a larger and tougher guy that's a RW that can pot 20G or more without breaking the bank. What's your solution?